The personal blog of Adam Nash

Fishville Economics: Points, Experience & Levels

My Zynga addiction clearly knows no bounds. Last week, Zynga launched a new game called Fishville, and clearly at this point I have no ability to resist any new Zynga game.

Fishville has a deceptively simple frame: you have a fish tank, and you buy fish eggs for it. The fish hatch, you feed them, and then when they are fully grown, you sell them for profit.

What I’ve found most interesting about the game is the new dimensions they are exploring in the economics of the game. Fishville adds a couple distinguishing twists versus Farmville or Café World:

Multiple Tanks. How many people wish they had more than one farm in Farmville? In Fishville, Zynga has two types of expansion – the ability to put more fish in a single tank and the ability to buy new tanks. This may not seem relevant from a structural standpoint – after all whether you add 20 fish to one tank or 10 to 2 tanks shouldn’t matter – but it should create a new dynamic around buying virtual goods to decorate different tanks.

Harvest Levels. This is the real twist to the economics. Fish grow up in stages, up to four levels. The revenue in coins and the experience you get goes up linearly with each level. So if you have a 4 hour fish, you can harvest them at 4 hours at Level 1, or 16 hours at Level 4. You still have to feed them or they die (similar to withering crops in Farmville), but you don’t need to “replant”.

The Harvest Levels have the most impact on the game economics. In financial terms, each fish now has a fixed cost and a variable cost, as well as a fixed experience pay-off and variable experience pay-off.

For example, let’s take the Mini Dart Goby, the first fish.

The Goby costs 7 coins for an egg. That’s a fixed cost. If you grow it to Level 1, you’ll get 18 coins, for a profit of 11 coins. Easy, right? Hold on. If you wait until Level 4, you’ll get 72 coins over that same 7 coin cost, for a profit of 65 coins.

The fixed cost means that your “profitability” or “profit / minute” goes up the longer you wait to harvest.

Seems like a no-brainer to wait until Level 4? Not so fast.

With Experience Points, the math works in reverse.

The Mini Dart Goby gives you 2 XP for dropping the egg. At Level 1, you’ll get 8 XP, for a total of 10 XP. But if you wait until Level 4, you’ll get 32 XP, for a total of 34 XP of the time period. In this case, your “XP / Minute” goes down the longer you wait to harvest.

It gets even harder.

You can harvest a fish in-between levels… but you don’t get any credit for the time between levels. So if you are half-way between levels, your “profit / minute” and “experience / minute” will be terrible. In fact, the math says you need to harvest at level boundaries pretty closely. (I think in a future blog post, I’ll graph this.)

For now, here are some tables I’ve made for the fish I have data on. Unfortunately, this game is so new, I can’t find any guides online with data for all fish. Special thanks to Erin Hoffmann, who serves as both data provider and my toughest competitor in Fishville.

The most interesting aspect to these tables is that while the profitability / minute rises for each level, Zynga has kept the fixed costs proportional enough that the ranking of the fish does not change significantly between 1 level or 4 levels.

Here is the profitability of different fish at Level 1:

Fish

Profit / One Level

Minutes / One Level

Profit / Minute

Sardine

7.00

3.00

2.33

Mini Dart Goby

11.00

5.00

2.20

Red Spot Cardinal

23.00

15.00

1.53

Swissguard Basslet

17.00

60.00

0.28

Shy Hamlet

54.00

240.00

0.23

Percula Clownfish

81.00

480.00

0.17

Royal Dottyback

99.00

960.00

0.10

Hawaiian Hogfish

72.00

720.00

0.10

Scooter Blenny

133.00

1440.00

0.09

Here is the profitability of different fish at Level 4:

Fish

Profit / Four Levels

Minutes / Four Levels

Profit / Minute

Sardine

43.00

12.00

3.58

Mini Dart Goby

65.00

20.00

3.25

Red Spot Cardinal

137.00

60.00

2.28

Swissguard Basslet

98.00

240.00

0.41

Shy Hamlet

321.00

960.00

0.33

Percula Clownfish

468.00

1920.00

0.24

Hawaiian Hogfish

432.00

2880.00

0.15

Royal Dottyback

567.00

3840.00

0.15

Scooter Blenny

796.00

5760.00

0.14

Here is the experience productivity of different fish at Level 1:

Fish

XP / One Level

Min / Four Levels

XP / Minute

Mini Dart Goby

8.00

5.00

1.60

Sardine

4.00

3.00

1.33

Red Spot Cardinal

16.00

15.00

1.07

Swissguard Basslet

20.00

60.00

0.33

Shy Hamlet

75.00

240.00

0.31

Percula Clownfish

135.00

480.00

0.28

Hawaiian Hogfish

170.00

720.00

0.24

Royal Dottyback

220.00

960.00

0.23

Scooter Blenny

290.00

1440.00

0.20

Here is the experience productivity of different fish at Level 4:

Fish

XP / Four Levels

Min / Four Levels

XP / Minute

Mini Dart Goby

26.00

20.00

1.30

Sardine

13.00

12.00

1.08

Red Spot Cardinal

52.00

60.00

0.87

Swissguard Basslet

68.00

240.00

0.28

Shy Hamlet

255.00

960.00

0.27

Percula Clownfish

459.00

1920.00

0.24

Hawaiian Hogfish

629.00

2880.00

0.22

Royal Dottyback

814.00

3840.00

0.21

Scooter Blenny

1073.00

5760.00

0.19

If you’d like to help, I’m missing data for the following fish:

Blue Damsel

Inland Silverside

Pajama Cardinal

Longnose Hawkfish

Annularis Angelfish

Blue Spot Grouper

Blue Hippo Tang

Bartlett Anthias

For each, please leave a comment with:

XP / Egg

Revenue / Level

XP / Level

Minutes / Level

Hope this helps the new Fishville players out there. Enjoy.

Update (11/14/2009): New blog post coming tomorrow, with updated tables and new info. Also, fixing the issue around the whole “Level 4/Adult” confusion, and publishing a Google Doc to help others benefit from the raw data. I’m still finding that people are ignoring the XP from the dropping of the egg, and only focusing on the XP from harvesting, so I’ll update tables to make that more clear.

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52 thoughts on “Fishville Economics: Points, Experience & Levels”

You have left out one key factor: your strategy is based on the idea that each fish grows at the same rate for each level. However, you have neglected the idea that each fish has 5 levels. Once the reach adulthood, that is a level in itself, simply without a number. When you state that they grow linearly, this is true up until the reach level three. What must be taken into consideration, however, is that growth from level 3 to level 4 (or in my terms, level 4 to 5) takes significantly longer than the linear growth for the other levels. This means an entirely different payoff in terms of growth time and revenue.

Katharine is correct.
My mini-dart goby:
Level 1: 5 minutes
(this is right after I drop the egg, and the star says 1- Level 1 has begun
Level 2: 5 minutes
The star says 2- level 2 has begun
Level 3: 5 minutes
The star says 3- level 3 has begun
Level 4: 2 days
When you reach level four, you have only reached it, you have not completed it yet, and that last level (COMPLETING level 4 is what is non-linear).

This is very helpful… thank you. Is there any equation that predicts how long Level 4 takes? Is it always 2 days? Because 2 days = 576×5 minutes. Hard to believe that an 8 hour fish, like the clown fish, would take 576×8 hours = 1/2 a year to reach the end of Level 4!

For the purposes of the above, I can just replace “Level 4” with “Level 3” and adjust the numbers. It seems like everything is linear until the last level.

I think the difference is in how people are classifying what a 1st level, 2nd level, etc. is.
For a Sardine:
Baby -> 1st level = 3 min
1st->2nd level = 3 min
2nd->3rd level = 3 min
3rd->4th level = 3 min
4th->5th? level = 1 day
When the number 1 appears in the star(fish), Adam is classifying that fish as being level 1, not attaining level 1. Thus when he is speaking of level 4 he is speaking of the 12 min (for sardines anyways) it takes to get to level 4. He has not addressed the fifth level. At least this is the way I understand your (and kelly’s) statements. Now if you mean that once the 1 day is up (or 2 days for gobys (from kelly’s statement), etc.) to get to the 5th level you get paid differently, it would be helpful to state exactly what that change in payment is. I somehow doubt its worth waiting for in which case the 5th level is irrelevant, but I welcome being pleasantly surprised by your findings.

Besides, as to the previouse post. I have not tried it with the goby or sardine, but at least for the hawiian hogfish, the xp and gold at level 4 was 480 gold and 610 xp. At level 5 it stayed at 480 gold and 610 xp, so I got no change in value between 4 and 5.

I can’t give you all the details you were after as I have not yet put one in my tank… but the Blue Damsel Costs 107, Sells for 302, and grows in 1.5 days. I will get back to you with the XP in about 2 days 🙂

I have suspected this but cannot ever prove it. I keep trying to drop food in the tank fast enough, then switch tools, hover over a fish that hasn’t eaten yet, and then watch him swim up to eat and the measure again. But I keep being too slow if there are few fish in my tank or getting confused about which fish it is if there are many.

The best test I’ve done so far is to have 50 sardines in the tank. They were all fed. Then 1/2 way through growth cycle, I dropped in 25 pieces of food. Then I waited for the growth cycle to end. 25 of my fish grew about 2 seconds faster than the other 25. Was that the result of the food or just a delay in the game updating that many fish? More testing needed.

But what HAPPENS at level 5? What are they called, what are they worth, is there some kind of bonus? I keep trying to hold onto one until that stage, but I always accidentally click him and sell him too early.

Yes sorry I meant 30 mins for the Silverside not 3, simple typo. My friends and I have tried many fish beyond the 4th level… nothing happens, they just don’t die as fast. The coins and XP stay the same. It is not worth waiting to find out what happens beyond the 4th level, because it does not benefit coins or XP.

I actually just sold my last mini dart goby, which I have let grow for days. It was on level 7 at 70%! What is the point of having the extra levels if you get nothing for it? After level 4, the experience or coins gained from the fish never changed. Does anyone know if you get something for letting them grow to these levels?

I don’t think Cost / XP is the right model. By ignoring time, it basically is just going to reward taking the fishes up levels. Most people want to see progress in terms of wealth and experience *as fast as possible*, so you need some time component.

You might be able to get away with “cost per XP per hour” or something compounded like that. I’ll think about it.

I think you need to take in to account the time taken to place the fish eggs, I think most users are going to do a patch of eggs all at once, and while this time won’t make much of a difference on the bigger time fish, it will make a difference on the 3 minute and 5 minute fish.

it is also necessary to include the players time schedule. the fast fishes are favored against the slow ones if you play day and night, constantly; and spend the same amount of time. if you choose sardine, you have to be ready in front of your computer in every 3 minutes. and you have to buy new eggs immediately as you sell the grown fishes. fast fishes are only favored on statistical charts, and keep you in front of your computer for longer time. therefore, one more factor has to be added to this analyses which is the “labor”, and precious time you have to spent by buying, selling and feeding. it was helpful by the way, thanks!

Hey guys, I just stumbled on this after a google search. Interesting info, but I just thought I’d ask and see if anyone has had this happen yet….

I recently hit level 20 and bought a 3rd tank. In this tank, I bought one of each fish to see what happens after they reach adulthood. So at level 20, you have access to 14 fish and a new tank holds 15.

I managed to stay a while and get most of the fast fish up to level 4 and logged off for a bit. When I came back, there was a dead fish but after a quick count, I still had 14 fish total. Unfortunately, putting a cursor on a dead fish doesn’t tell me what it was and I couldn’t readily identify it from the shape either. My only guess is that one of the adult fish, possibly the sardine, had a baby.

@quinn congrats on the lvl 29 but honestly the best strategy in fishville is how much time u can devote to it my current lvl is 14

for me the best strategy is placing 50 blue damsel grows in 8 days giving 72k XP

and 30 Scooter Blimey in second tank grows in 5 days giving 31k XP

so if i average it at a 10 day pace tht would make 62K Xp from Blimey, 72K Xp from damsel and still i can level of from fast fishes for the rest of the 2 days couple of thousand from red spot cardinals

in my case that would amount to a huge XP of ~140K Xp in 10 days….. roughly +10 levels in 10 days good enuff isnt it 🙂

It occurs to me that in deciding which fish to clone, the cost of the fish is not relevant once you already have one. So I’ve done a profit analysis leaving cost out of the equation. I found to my surprise that there is a clear winner. Maroon Clown is far and away the best fish to clone, winning you 50 coins and 63 XP per hour. I have read on FishVille discussion pages that a good fish to clone is Kole Tang. This is not, however, true at lower levels. At Level 37, Kole Tang won me a mere 19.1 coins and 9.77 XP per hour.
Highest scorers are (in order. See tables below):
Coins per hr per clone
1. Maroon Clown 50
2. Giant Shimpgoby 39.58
3. Flagtail Shrimpgoby 39.4
4. Murphy Cardinal 37.3
5. Neon Black Damsel 36.8
6. Blue Assessor 33.61
XP per hr per clone
1. Maroon Clown 63
2. Neon Black Damsel 43.88
3. Flagtail Shrimpgoby 43.3
4. Murphy Cardinal 40.83
5. Blue Assessor 37.25
6. Blackfoot Lionfish 35